Four dead in Albany; storm toll rises to 16 in South Georgia

Four people in Dougherty County were killed by a suspected tornado that struck a mobile home park east Albany Sunday afternoon.

Albany police public information officer Phyllis Banks said late Sunday that the county coroner had confirmed four deaths. Authorities were still sifting through the debris at a massive trailer park in east Albany that was devastated by the storm.

Dougherty County Commission Chairman Chris Cohilas said Sunday evening that his county was still trying to recover from the last round of storms a few weeks ago. Now the need is worse.

“We need federal assistance. We the president to come visit,” Cohilas said.

Cohilas, the Dougherty commission chairman, earlier posted a video to his Facebook page that showed extraordinary devastation along Holly Drive.

“It looks like a nuclear bomb went off,” he remarks at one point.

Later, Cohilas posted another Facebook video saying that the Paradise Village Mobile Home Park off Holly Drive was “demolished.”

“The demolition and the damage are unspeakable,” Cohilas said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. . . . Please, please, tell everyone, share it on Facebook, do not go to Paradise Village trailer park to go sightseeing. It’s not something you should go to sight-see.”

He said Dougherty County school buses were ferrying people away from the destruction zone and to local shelters.

The Herald’s website quoted a local state legislator as saying that a mobile home park in east Albany looked like a “war zone.”

“The old Paradise Village Mobile Home Park has been destroyed,” the Herald quoted state Rep. Darrel Ealum as saying. “We’ve just had phenomenal damage.”